What to Watch Verdict
Pros
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⚡️No one's trying to just skip over the loss of Wells, which is a refreshing change.
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⚡️That. Fight. Tho.
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⚡️[Redacted] is back!
Cons
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⚡️Barry getting annoyed by his heart at this point is kind of an old hat.
This post contains spoilers for The Flash.
Check out our last review here.
What happens when you remove Barry Allen's heart and replace it with a brain? Turns out The Flash's dose of artificial speedforce didn't just return his superspeed. It also gave him a brand new super brain, and super smart Barry sucks. By removing his emotions, we find ourselves a hero who is even smarter than Giddeon. But we also meet a Barry Allen who doesn't care about his friends getting shot or whether or who he saves from the Mirrorverse so long as they give them a way to beat Eva. It's a rough day for the Super Friends' heart hero.
Cisco (Carlos Valdez) starts to suspect that Barry's (Grant Gustin) lost what makes him a hero when he allows Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) to get hit by the very light tech that nearly killed her just last season. Our weird new brainiac had a solution to save his teammate, but it's clear that his humanity is quickly leaving the stadium. Team Flash's concerns are confirmed when Barry finds that they have to choose between Iris (Candice Patton) and Kamilla (Victoria Park) and Captain Singh (Patrick Sabongui). It will take the same amount of energy to pull Iris out vs. the two of them since she's been in the Mirrorverse longer. So, Barry's willing to sacrifice the other two if it means the one who ups their chances to destroy Eva (Efrat Dor) are better.
The one thing that Barry can't predict are the emotions that are involved in decision making. When he creates a simulation in his mind, he sees the team choosing Singh and Kamilla over Iris. He doesn't believe them when they insist that they would never choose. Instead, he uses probability to kick the team's asses and go ahead with saving Iris. Though he ultimately wins, the battle that ensues between The Flash and a Killer Frost on Velocity X is legitimately one of the best fights The Flash has seen in seasons.
With the team defeated, all Barry has to do is open the portal and reach out to Iris. Thing is, he didn't account for her emotions either. Obviously, Iris West Allen isn't going anywhere without Kamilla and Singh — both of which have collapsed due to entering the Mirrorverse via Eva's gun rather than being pushed into it from her office mirror. Ol' Brainy acknowledges that he wasn't able to see this outcome, but he still forces his wife to leave the Mirrorverse without their friends. It's not until Iris collapses from being ripped from the world she had previously inhabited that makes Barry's heart start paying attention to what's going on around it. In a panic, Barry destroys the artificial speedforce resulting in his own collapse. In short: things are a little messy for Team Flash right now.
When Barry had previously needed to distract Eva, he elected to out that she's her mirror version to the world. Super analytical minds can't quantify that when you push an unstable supervillain they get, uh... more unstable. It's not entirely clear what she does after her snap, but a CCPD officer is harassed and then we cut to the point in the timeline when Eobard Thawn (Matt Letscher) originally took over Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh). We see him speed away in his new body, but then the ground glows and a new Original Flavor Wells pops up. I know a lot about comics, I've watched The Flash from the beginning, and I still can't tell you what in the hell is going on right now. But, what I can tell you is that I'm damn into it.
The only real struggle point in "The Speed of Thought" is the fact that Barry bemoaning his heart is kind of an old hat at this point. How many times do we have to go through watching Barry have a tantrum about his emotions only to have apathy or wrath bite him seconds later? Great fight! Great to see Wells return, and a future where we save the rest of the team from the Mirrorverse. But let's toss this old hat in the bin, yeah?
